More than 10 years after the state began studying Tashmoo Pond as part of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project, a final report on the pond’s declining health is expected to be released this week.
Effective June 1, boaters in Vineyard Haven waterways will be restricted to three days on an anchor. The Tisbury selectmen unanimously voted to approve an amendment to the town anchoring regulations after a public hearing Tuesday.
Work to deepen the channels at the entrance to Lake Tashmoo and at the west entrance to Vineyard Haven harbor wrapped up earlier this month. Sand was placed at the public beach in Tashmoo as well as the public beaches at Grove avenue and Owen Little Way.
On Thursday, Sept. 26, the Tisbury Waterways, Inc. will hold its annual meeting at 5 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre. The meeting will include a presentation on inshore dredging projects and what to do with the collected spoils. The program is a joint effort by the Tisbury Waterways Inc. and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
At approximately 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 25, the tide in Lake Tashmoo reached its highest point and began to roll back. Susie Bowman, a naturalist and teacher at Mass Audubon’s Felix Neck wildlife sanctuary, was there to mark the change with her husband, Woody. After Mrs. Bowman marked the tide’s apex, she began measuring out five-meter by five-meter quadrants in which they would search for pairs of mating horseshoe crabs. This is the couple’s fifth year of horseshoe crab surveying at Lake Tashmoo.
Town waterway regulations were the topic of discussion on Tuesday night when members of the Tashmoo management committee, the harbor management committee and the general public met with the Tisbury selectmen.
In a special working session, the selectmen asked for public comment to clear up confusion over town mooring regulations, especially in Lake Tashmoo. The meeting was scheduled after a summer that saw several public disputes over increased rule enforcement at Lake Tashmoo.
Lake Tashmoo, which had been closed to shellfishing because of a rare toxic algae bloom, reopened Friday morning.
A press release from the town of Tisbury said that the state notified shellfish constable Danielle Ewart on Friday morning to say that additional testing indicated the pond had been cleared and that it could be reopened to shellfishers immediately.
Ms. Ewart discovered the bright pink algae bloom called prorocentrum lima in the outside flats of Lake Tashmoo a few weeks ago. The algae has been associated with diarrheal shellfish poisoning.
Lake Tashmoo has been closed to shellfishing as of Wednesday afternoon due to the presence of a potentially toxic algae bloom.
Tisbury town administrator John Bugbee said Thursday that people should not shellfish in the body of water, and should dispose of all shellfish recently caught there, as there is no way of knowing how long the algae bloom has been in place.
A rare algal bloom has shut down shellfishing in Lake Tashmoo during a week where other Vineyard swimming spots were closed because of bacteria.
Seth’s Pond, the popular swimming hole in West Tisbury, has been closed to swimmers for more than a week because of high levels of enterococcus bacteria. The same bacteria led to a brief closure of Pay Beach in Oak Bluffs.
Starting Wednesday, Lake Tashmoo was closed to shellfishing because of a toxic algae bloom that some said is rare to Vineyard ponds.
